MUMBAI: On Friday, February 28, the White House is hosting the first-ever Student Film Festival, featuring the work of more than a dozen young filmmakers who created short films celebrating the role of technology in the classroom.
The Filmmaker-in-Chief, President Barack Obama was at Buck Lodge to celebrate progress on ConnectED when he recorded the video on his iPad. ConnectED is an ambitious project to connect 99% of American students to next-generation broadband and wireless technology within five years. In Adelphi, he announced that some of America’s largest companies answered the President’s call to action towards that goal by pledging more than $750 million in commitments to deliver cutting-edge technologies to classrooms, including devices, free software, teacher professional development, and home wireless connectivity.
Building on the President’s eagerness to connect students to technology, and his newfound interest in filmmaking, The White House excited to host the first-ever White House Student Film Festival. In November, we called for Kindergarten to 12th grade students around the country to create short films on the role of technology in their classroom, and students responded with nearly 3,000 entries. In collaboration with the American Film Institute, the White House will screen the finalists' works this Friday along with a star-studded cast including Kal Penn, Bill Nye, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Conan O’Brien.
In addition to the celebration of the student films and the President’s remarks, FOX and National Geographic Channel will treat the attendees to a sneak peek of the first episode of the upcoming television series, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, a US documentary executive produced by Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy, Ted, The Cleveland Show) which celebrates the importance of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM).
